US Business

Twitter to share data at heart of Musk deal dispute: report

9 Jun 2022

Twitter will yield to Elon Musk’s demand for internal data central to a standoff over his troubled $44 billion bid to buy the platform, US media reported on Wednesday.

The news comes just days after the Tesla chief threatened to back out of his deal to purchase Twitter, accusing it of failing to provide data on fake accounts.

The Washington Post, New York Times and website Axios cited unnamed sources familiar with the negotiations as saying Twitter’s board decided to let Musk access its full “firehose” of internal data associated with the hundreds of millions of tweets posted daily at the service.

“This would end the major standoff between Musk and the board on this hot button issue which has paused the deal,” Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said in a tweet.

Twitter chief executive Parag Agrawal has said that fewer than five percent of accounts active on any given day at Twitter are bots, but that analysis cannot be replicated externally due to the need to keep user data private.

About two dozen companies already pay to access the massive trove of internal Twitter data, which includes records of tweets along with information about accounts and devices used to fire them off, according to the Post.

Twitter declined to comment on the reports but has defended its responsiveness to Musk’s requests, and vowed to complete the deal on the original terms.

The mercurial Musk agreed to buy Twitter in a $44 billion deal in late April.

Twitter’s top legal officer has told employees that a special shareholder vote whether to approve the buyout deal could be held in late July or early August, according to Bloomberg.

Musk began making significant noise about fake accounts in mid-May, saying on Twitter he could walk away from the transaction if his concerns were not addressed.

Some observers have seen Musk’s questioning of Twitter bots as a means to end the takeover process, or to pressure Twitter into lowering the price.

The potential for Musk to take Twitter private has stoked protest from critics who warn his stewardship will embolden hate groups and disinformation campaigns.

US securities regulators have also pressed Musk for an explanation of an apparent delay in reporting his Twitter stock buys.

Twitter shares finished the official trading day slightly above $40, significantly lower than the $54.20 Musk agreed to pay when he inked the purchase deal.

US, European stocks fall on worries over inflation, central bank moves

9 Jun 2022

Wall Street stocks tumbled Wednesday, giving back the prior session’s gains on festering inflation worries and joining European equities lower ahead of a key European Central Bank decision.

US equities, which forged higher on Tuesday despite a downcast forecast from the World Bank, were back in the red as oil prices jumped and the White House warned of another gloomy consumer price report later this week.

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters the Biden administration expects Friday’s consumer price index to be “elevated,” boosting expectations for more Federal Reserve monetary tightening.

“The Combination of higher crude prices and yields ticking up again has people concerned,” said Art Hogan, strategist at National Securities.

Major US indices fell about one percent, while bourses in Paris and Frankfurt also retreated, with a market note from Charles Schwab describing investors as “appearing a bit skittish” ahead of Thursday’s ECB decision.

The ECB is on Thursday expected to signal an end to its bond-buying, paving the way for an interest rate increase further down the line.

“The reality for the economy and probably the stock markets is that aggressive central bank rate hikes are likely to take a sharp bite out of household consumption,” said SPI Asset Management’s Stephen Innes.

The Paris-based Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development predicted that the world economy would grow by three percent this year — much slower than its previous estimate of 4.5 percent in December.

Earlier in Asia, stock prices had rallied as China eased Covid lockdown restrictions and is forecast to lift its crackdown on the tech sector.

China’s approval of dozens of new video game releases sent shares of some of its biggest tech firms soaring Wednesday.

Japan’s Nikkei also piled on about one percent as the falling yen gave support to exporters. 

The dollar climbed to a two-decade high against the Japanese currency, which has been weighed down by the Bank of Japan’s hands-off approach to inflation compared with other central banks.

– Key figures at around 2030 GMT –

New York – Dow: DOWN 0.8 percent to 32,910.90 (close)

New York – S&P 500: DOWN 1.1 percent at 4,115.77 (close)

New York – Nasdaq: DOWN 0.7 percent at 12,086.27 (close)

London – FTSE 100: DOWN 0.1 percent at 7,593.00 (close)

Frankfurt – DAX: DOWN 0.8 percent at 14,445.99 (close)

Paris – CAC 40: DOWN 0.8 percent at 6,448.63 (close)

EURO STOXX 50: DOWN 0.5 percent at 3,788.93 (close)

Tokyo – Nikkei 225: UP 1.0 percent at 28,234.29 (close)

Hong Kong – Hang Seng Index: UP 2.2 percent at 22,014.59 (close)

Shanghai – Composite: UP 0.7 percent at 3,263.79 (close)

Dollar/yen: UP at 134.29 yen from 132.59 yen late Tuesday

Euro/dollar: UP at $1.0720 from $1.0703 

Pound/dollar: DOWN at $1.2535 from $1.2592

Euro/pound: UP at 85.54 pence from 85.00 pence

Brent North Sea crude: UP 2.5 percent at $123.58 per barrel

West Texas Intermediate: UP 2.3 percent at $122.11 per barrel

burs-jmb/to

Schoolgirl tells Congress of playing dead to survive Texas massacre

8 Jun 2022

An 11-year-old girl told horrified lawmakers Wednesday of smearing herself in her murdered classmate’s blood to play dead during the most chilling in a spate of gun massacres that have convulsed the United States.

Miah Cerrillo, a fourth grader at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, recounted for a House of Representatives committee the moments when 19 of her fellow students and two teachers were killed by a teen gunman last month.

She recalled how her class had been watching a movie and scrambled behind their teacher’s desk and their backpacks when the shooter burst into the room.

“He… told my teacher ‘good night’ and then shot her in the head. And then he shot some of my classmates and the whiteboard,” Miah said in a brief but gut-wrenching pre-recorded interview.

“When I went to the backpacks, he shot my friend who was next to me and I thought he was going to come back into the room so I grabbed a little blood and put it all over me.”

Miah recalled how she kept completely silent, before grabbing her dead teacher’s cell phone when the moment came and dialing 911.

“I told her that we need help — and (we need) to see the police in our classroom,” she said.

Police in Uvalde have come under intense scrutiny after it emerged that more than a dozen officers waited outside the door of Miah’s class and did nothing as the children lay dead or dying.

Miah was asked what she wanted to see happen in the wake of the attack.

“To have security,” she said, confirming that she feared a mass shooter could target her school again.

“I don’t want it to happen again,” she said.

– ‘Ripped apart’ by gunfire –

Miah — whose account of the shootings left some lawmakers in tears or wide-eyed in disbelief — is having nightmares and still healing from bullet fragments in her back, according to her father Miguel Cerrillo.

“She’s not the same little girl I used to play with,” he told the committee.

Her testimony came with Congress facing mounting pressure to respond to spiraling gun violence — and particularly mass shootings — across the country.

Massacres at Miah’s school and days earlier at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York have shocked the nation, reigniting urgent calls for gun safety reforms.

The House Oversight and Reform Committee also heard from the mother of Lexi Rubio, a Robb Elementary fourth grader who was killed.

“We don’t want you to think of Lexi as just a number. She was intelligent, compassionate and athletic,” Kimberly Rubio said via a video link, wiping away tears as she sat next to her husband Felix.

“She was quiet, shy, unless she had a point to make. When she was right, as she often was, she stood her ground. She was firm, direct, voice unwavering. So today we stand for Lexi and as her voice, we demand action.”

Roy Guerrero, a pediatrician who attended to several victims in Uvalde, spoke of encountering “two children whose bodies had been pulverized by bullets fired at them, decapitated, whose flesh had been ripped apart.”

– ‘Elected to protect us’ –

A cross-party group of senators is working on a narrow collection of controls that could develop into their first serious attempt at gun regulation reform in decades.

The package would boost funding for mental health services and school security, narrowly expand background checks, and incentivize states to institute so-called “red flag laws” that enable authorities to confiscate weapons from individuals considered a threat.

But it does not include an assault weapons ban or universal background checks, meaning it will fall short of the expectations of President Joe Biden, progressive Democrats, and anti-gun violence activists.

And even this compromise deal has to run the gauntlet of an evenly divided Senate and earn the votes of at least 10 Republicans, most of whom are against significant regulatory reform.

On the other side of the Capitol, House Democrats are set to pass a much broader package of proposals later Wednesday that includes raising the purchasing age for semi-automatic rifles from 18 to 21.

Those proposals are going nowhere — they do not have the 60 votes they would need to advance in the Senate — but Democratic leadership has been keen to act after the spate of recent mass shootings.

Garnell Whitfield Jr, the son of Buffalo massacre victim Ruth Whitfield, who was 86, testified Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee on white supremacist violence.

“You expect us to continue to forgive and forget over and over again? And what are you doing? You were elected to protect us and protect our way of life,” the retired fire commissioner said in an emotional appeal to senators. 

US regulator favors revamp of stock market trading system

9 Jun 2022

Citing equity market trading defects revealed in last year’s GameStop saga, a top US securities regulator on Wednesday endorsed a broad revamp of the stock market trading system. 

In a speech billed as a first step towards a possible update in the rules likely to rile financial firms, Gary Gensler, chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, said he favored restructuring the system in order to better protect retail investors.

“It’s not clear… that our current national market system is as fair and competitive as possible for investors,” Gensler said in a virtual address at a conference hosted by Piper Sandler.

The speech marks the SEC’s latest action in response to frenzied trading in early 2021 during which extreme volatility in GameStop, AMC Entertainment and a handful of other equities rocked the market and led brokerages to implement sudden trading restrictions that angered investors and spurred congressional probes.

Gensler said the current system routes “the vast majority” of stock trades orders to electronic trading wholesalers such as Citadel Securities and Virtu Financial. 

In some cases, these firms pay the brokerages, an arrangement known as “payment for order flow” that can allow brokerages such as Robinhood Markets to offer commission-free trades to individual investors.

But Gensler is skeptical that this arrangement protects retail investors and believes the payment for order flow system creates conflicts of interests and encourages “gamification” on online platforms to increase trading volumes.

Gensler has asked SEC staff to consider steps to “enhance order-by-order competition,” potentially through auctions. He has also asked staff for recommendations to mitigate the risks with payment for order flow and to provide more transparency.

The SEC head described the speech as a starting point towards possible regulation that will include extensive public comment and discussion with other SEC commissioners.

Doug Cifu, chief executive of Virtu, disputed Gensler’s characterizations, telling CNBC that most of the broker dealers with which his firm trades do not accept payment for order flow.

“The chair with all due respect is conflating the issue of payment for order flow with the ecosystem that has evolved in this country for retail trading, which has really enabled retail investors to have instantaneous execution and essentially zero commission on 8000 listed names,” Cifu said.

“You know, the cliche that markets have never been better is actually factually correct.”

Man charged with plotting murder of US Supreme Court justice

8 Jun 2022

A California man upset about mass shootings and the looming Supreme Court rulings on abortion and gun rights was charged Wednesday with attempting to murder conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Nicholas John Roske was arrested in the early morning hours outside Kavanaugh’s house in the Washington suburb of Chevy Chase, Maryland carrying a semi-automatic Glock 17 pistol, a knife and tactical vest, according to documents filed in federal court.

Roske was spotted outside Kavanaugh’s house by two US Marshals standing guard. He walked away and called emergency services, telling them he was feeling suicidal and had come from California to kill Kavanaugh, according to the documents. 

The 26-year-old was arrested without incident by local police while he was still on the phone.

He later told police “that he was upset about the leak of a recent Supreme Court draft decision regarding the right to abortion, as well as the recent school shooting in Uvalde, Texas,” an FBI affidavit said.

“Roske indicated that he believed the justice that he intended to kill would side with Second Amendment decisions that would loosen gun control laws,” it added.

President Joe Biden condemned the threat against Kavanaugh “in the strongest terms,” the White House said.

– Heightened security –

The arrest came as the court prepares to release potentially landmark judgements on politically charged cases on gun rights and abortion by the end of June.

A draft opinion in the abortion case that was leaked at the beginning of May, written by conservative Justice Samuel Alito, suggested that the court was poised to overturn the five-decade-old Roe v Wade ruling that said women had a constitutional right to obtain abortions.

If Alito’s draft opinion goes through with support from a majority of the justices, it will likely allow many states to immediately implement full or near-full bans on the procedure.

The prospect has sparked anger and dismay among advocates of abortion rights, and led to protests at the homes of Kavanaugh, Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts.

After the leak and the protests, security was increased for the justices and barriers were raised around the court itself to prevent protestors from nearing the building.

“Threats of violence and actual violence against the justices of course strike at the heart of our democracy,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said Wednesday. “For that reason last month, I accelerated the protection of all the justices’ residences, 24/7.”

-Swing vote? –

Kavanaugh is one of six justices in the court’s conservative wing, against three progressives, but he is not viewed as being as hardline as Alito or some of the others on the bench.

A Catholic native of Washington, his nomination in 2018 to the high court drew particularly heated debates over his views toward women and abortion rights.

His confirmation gave conservatives a 5-4 majority on the court, which grew further when Catholic, stridently anti-abortion Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined in October 2020.

The leak of the Alito draft opinion sparked speculation that someone was hoping to push the court in one direction or another in its final ruling on the abortion case.

Some analysts believe that Roberts and Kavanaugh could occupy a moderating position on the final judgement to partially sustain the abortion protections in the original 1973 Roe v Wade decision.

– Guns case –

The court is also expected to rule before the end of the month on a New York firearms case that could see it effectively loosen gun control laws.

That decision is also in focus following recent mass shootings, including the murder by a teenage racist of 10 African Americans in Buffalo, New York, and the separate killing of 19 schoolchildren and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas.

Those shootings have heightened calls for tighter controls on firearms, leading to sharp pushback from gun owners seeking less regulation.

Man convicted of 1984 murder of girl executed in Arizona

8 Jun 2022

A 66-year-old man convicted of the 1984 murder of an eight-year-old girl was executed by lethal injection in the US state of Arizona on Wednesday.

Frank Atwood was put to death at 10:16 am (1716 GMT) at Arizona State Prison in Florence, Attorney General Mark Brnovich said in a statement.

Atwood was convicted in 1987 of kidnapping Vicki Lynne Hoskinson while she was riding her bicycle in Tucson, Arizona.

Her body was found in the desert seven months later.

Atwood had a choice between lethal injection and the gas chamber but declined to make a selection.

Lethal injection is the default method of execution in the state in the event an inmate does not choose.

Atwood’s execution was the second conducted in the past month in Arizona.

Clarence Dixon, also 66, was executed on May 11 for the 1978 murder of a college student.

Dixon’s execution was the first in the southwestern state since 2014.

There have been seven executions in the United States this year, according to the non-profit Death Penalty Information Center.

Twitter to share data at heart of Musk deal dispute: report

8 Jun 2022

Twitter will yield to Elon Musk’s demand for internal data central to a standoff over his troubled $44 billion bid to buy the social media platform, the  Washington Post reported on Wednesday.

The news comes just days after the Tesla chief threatened to back out of his deal to purchase Twitter, accusing it of failing to provide data on fake accounts.

The Post cited an unnamed source familiar with the negotiations as saying Twitter’s board decided to let Musk access its full “firehose” of internal data associated with the hundreds of millions of tweets posted daily at the service.

“This would end the major standoff between Musk and the board on this hot button issue which has paused the deal,” Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said in a tweet.

Twitter chief executive Parag Agrawal has said that fewer than five percent of accounts active on any given day at Twitter are bots, but that analysis cannot be replicated externally due to the need to keep user data private.

About two dozen companies already pay to access the massive trove of internal Twitter data, which includes records of tweets along with information about accounts and devices used to fire them off, according to the Post.

Twitter declined to comment on the Washington Post report but has defended its responsiveness to Musk’s requests, and vowed to complete the deal on the original terms.

The mercurial Musk agreed to buy Twitter in a $44 billion deal in late April.

He began making significant noise about fake accounts in mid-May, saying on Twitter he could walk away from the transaction if his concerns were not addressed.

Some observers have seen Musk’s questioning of Twitter bots as a means to end the takeover process, or to pressure Twitter into lowering the price.

The potential for Musk to take Twitter private has stoked protest from critics who warn his stewardship will embolden hate groups and disinformation campaigns.

US securities regulators have also pressed Musk for an explanation of an apparent delay in reporting his Twitter stock buys.

Twitter to share data at heart of Musk deal dispute: report

8 Jun 2022

Twitter will yield to Elon Musk’s demand for internal data central to a standoff over his troubled $44 billion bid to buy the social media platform, the  Washington Post reported on Wednesday.

The news comes just days after the Tesla chief threatened to back out of his deal to purchase Twitter, accusing it of failing to provide data on fake accounts.

The Post cited an unnamed source familiar with the negotiations as saying Twitter’s board decided to let Musk access its full “firehose” of internal data associated with the hundreds of millions of tweets posted daily at the service.

“This would end the major standoff between Musk and the board on this hot button issue which has paused the deal,” Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said in a tweet.

Twitter chief executive Parag Agrawal has said that fewer than five percent of accounts active on any given day at Twitter are bots, but that analysis cannot be replicated externally due to the need to keep user data private.

About two dozen companies already pay to access the massive trove of internal Twitter data, which includes records of tweets along with information about accounts and devices used to fire them off, according to the Post.

Twitter declined to comment on the Washington Post report but has defended its responsiveness to Musk’s requests, and vowed to complete the deal on the original terms.

The mercurial Musk agreed to buy Twitter in a $44 billion deal in late April.

He began making significant noise about fake accounts in mid-May, saying on Twitter he could walk away from the transaction if his concerns were not addressed.

Some observers have seen Musk’s questioning of Twitter bots as a means to end the takeover process, or to pressure Twitter into lowering the price.

The potential for Musk to take Twitter private has stoked protest from critics who warn his stewardship will embolden hate groups and disinformation campaigns.

US securities regulators have also pressed Musk for an explanation of an apparent delay in reporting his Twitter stock buys.

Amazon's indigenous leaders make plea at Americas summit

8 Jun 2022

The custodians of the primal forests that stretch across eight Latin American countries said national leaders gathering in Los Angeles this week had to listen to them if they wanted to save the Amazon.

Indigenous leaders from across South America are in the United States for the Summit of the Americas, a semi-regular gathering of heads of state from the Western Hemisphere.

But, they say, many are not being allowed into the meetings where the land their people have called home for centuries is being discussed.

“In these important events, where there are governments in power, we should be hearing from indigenous people from different countries,” said Domingo Peas, from the Achuar community in the Ecuadorian Amazon.

Peas, a member of the Confederation of Indigenous Nations of the Ecuadoran Amazon, traveled by boat, car, bus and plane over more than two days to get from his remote community of some 100 families to Los Angeles.

But when he arrived, he was told he would not be able to participate in the event, despite its having climate change as a major topic.

“Indigenous voices are not being heard at the summit, indigenous delegates are being denied entry,” said Atossa Soltani, founder and president of the NGO Amazon Watch.

Not hearing what they have to say would be a huge mistake, she told AFP.

“Indigenous peoples not only have the solutions to our climate and  biodiversity crisis, they are the original inhabitants. 

“The reason we have these incredibly intact forests in Latin America, is because indigenous peoples for centuries and millennia have been taking care of the forests.

“They need to be at the table. They have something to teach the modern world.”

The Summit of the Americas is being held in the United States for the first time since its inaugural edition in 1994.

The gathering, which was intended to showcase US President Joe Biden’s engagement with the vast continent to the south, has floundered because a number of significant figures are not here.

Most conspicuously, Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, whose co-operation is key if the Biden administration wants to get a handle on immigration, said he would stay away because leaders from Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba had not been invited.

Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro, however, is expected to attend. 

Soltani said Bolsonaro, whose country contains the lion’s share of the Amazon needs to rein in the rampant commercial exploitation of the forest.

“The fate of the Amazon is in the hands of these world leaders who are gathering here this week. That is the fate of all of us. This is the future for our children, it’s the future for life on this planet,” she said.

US lays out pledges as Biden woos Latin American leaders

8 Jun 2022

US President Joe Biden heads Wednesday to a Latin America summit on a mission to woo back the region as his administration pledged greater economic cooperation, investment and a program to train half a million health workers.

Biden is hoping to cement ties with a region long seen by Washington as its turf but where China has quickly emerged as a leading investor, although the administration has focused on modest progress rather than sweeping proposals.

“We need to demonstrate,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Tuesday at the weeklong summit, “that democracies can really effectively deliver for their citizens.”

Hours before Biden was to arrive, the White House announced a new Americas Health Corps that aims to improve the skills of 500,000 health workers across the region, building on the lessons from Covid-19, which hit the Western Hemisphere especially hard.

The health training will cost $100 million, although the United States will not contribute it all and will seek to raise funds, including through the Pan American Health Organization, an administration official said.

China has stepped up its role in Latin America during the pandemic, moving early to supply vaccines, and US nemesis Cuba has long exported its state-employed doctors. 

Biden will separately announce plans for a hemisphere-wide “economic partnership,” although there were few concrete commitments as part of it.

The announcements comes a day after Vice President Kamala Harris detailed $1.9 billion in private-sector investment in impoverished and violence-ravaged El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

The troubles in the so-called Northern Triangle, as well as Haiti, have generated a soaring number of migrants to the United States, setting off a domestic furor as Donald Trump’s Republican Party demands efforts to stop them.

– Trade deals lite –

The Summit of the Americas is the first in the United States since the inaugural edition in 1994 was held in Miami under Bill Clinton, who proposed a free-trade zone that would span the hemisphere other than communist Cuba.

The White House billed Biden’s summit as an update to Clinton’s vision. But the US political mood has since dramatically soured on free trade, with Biden’s predecessor Trump rising to power denouncing liberalization as harmful to US workers. 

The Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity, to be announced by Biden, will look at coordinating on standards and supply chains but will not offer new market access — a key incentive offered to the region by China, with its billion-plus consumer market.

Stronger supply chains will help “our hemisphere reduce overdependence and concentration on certain countries,” another administration official said.

Biden last month similarly unveiled an Asian partnership on setting economic standards as he visited Tokyo.

But unlike in Asia, the United States already has free-trade deals with a number of major Latin American nations including Mexico, Chile, Colombia and Peru.

The official said the new partnership would start with “like-minded countries,” without naming them.

While hesitant on free trade, Biden has stood firm on another core principle of the original Summit of the Americas — democracy — even as he considers going next month to Saudi Arabia, a critical oil supplier.

Draining US diplomatic energy ahead of the summit, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador refused to attend as he insisted that Biden invite the leftist leaders of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, shunned on the grounds that they are autocrats.

Biden is separately expected to meet President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, Latin America’s most populous nation, despite rising fears that the Trump ally will not accept the legitimacy of upcoming elections.

– ‘Nearshoring’ –

Mauricio Claver-Carone, the president of the Inter-American Development Bank, said that Latin America can increasingly be seen as a “sea of peace” for investors amid the global turbulence from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and rising risks associated with China.

The head of the bank, which provides development funding in Latin America, said he saw a rise of “nearshoring,” with businesses moving closer to markets instead of to China.

Since the first Summit of the Americas, “each dollar that went to China was one dollar, one investment, one job less for Latin America and the Caribbean,” he told AFP in an interview in Los Angeles.

In Latin America, “whether they are governments of the left or the right, they all want foreign investment, they all want nearshoring, they all want economic growth,” he said.

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